Some Answers

I thought I would answer a few of your FAQ’s today as I know I have been sitting on these for awhile but with the blog move and Valentines day etc time has gotten away from me.

1. Do you have any tips on what you do to stay organised and balanced yourself? It’s hard with small children to look after yourself and it sure takes organisation to achieve it!!!

Ahh balance, we all strive to achieve it and I am no different. With a full time job, plus a husband, toddler a house, friends, family, blog, me time etc etc juggling it all is the ultimate challenge. There are a few ways I have found to achieve this.  Firstly- keep a detailed diary/organiser it doesn’t matter if you work outside the home or not you are a home planner as well and scheduling time out/date nights/ to do lists/ book clubs is a great way to keep a home, work, life balance.

Secondly- Putting aside some of the mothers guilt and making sure you schedule time our just for yourself is also so important. I have always been of the philosophy that a tired stressed out and fed up mummy is really no good to our kids, the roll on effect of that is that we snap at them and feel over worked and frustrated. Time out in my opinion can be in or outside the home if you find it impossible to actually get out of the house still schedule in the  time to put on a face mask, make a phone call, catch up on emails or have some girlfriends over for a coffee. If I can’t get out of the house I will often book in a girls night at my place and just scrapbook and chat and have coffee here with a bunch of friends. We all rotate houses as well.

I would love to see a timetable of your daily activites. How do you fit in everything you do? Such a beautiful home and all your yummy cooking. Do you even keep a timetable as such or set goals each day of what you want to achieve, even if it is just cleaning or cooking?

Thank you for your lovely comments in regards to our home/cooking : ) Yes I sure do keep to a daily schedule/ to do list for most days to actually be able to achieve and remember everything from going to the Post Office to taking photos for the blog I write lists for it all. Most of them go into my planner and I just pop them in there when I think of them- otherwise I forget! On any given REALLY busy day my schedule can look like this-

Whoa I know a lot on there, that was a particularly busy day. I usually do work on the timetable side to be able to plan out appointments with times etc and then on the dot point side I write to do lists, people to return calls to, emails to write etc. I will then often post it note over the top of the page if I am writing a short shopping list etc.

Ok for chores/ cleaning etc I am currently trialling a new print out from the project girl I found here. I used this to pop in additional little things Simon and I might want to get done during the week. As we both have flexible work schedules we might be home in the afternoon and have time to do gardening etc and then work on emails etc later on at night- it works for us !!

The other free download I am liking the look of is from a site called Everything Mom and it is called a Household Management Checklist which you can find here. I like this one as it actually gives you tasks to do daily morning and night and then weekly. I was thinking of using this one in the early days when our new  little boy is born and I have Simon at home to help-  then he will just be able to easily see what needs to be done without having to ask !!

Keeping in mind these planner/downloads and diary ideas are a great theory and most of the time they work really well for our family as I know if I don’t write it down it wont get done. I feel like  once it is on paper I have commited to doing it, it doesn’t mean it will but some of it might and thats better than nothing !! Some days we do nothing and I fluff about and the week goes by and I feel like I have accomplished nothing. But on a good week when I use a few systems to help me run my life and home the balance just falls into place and I love that : )

I hope these posts answers your questions ladies, thank you so much for taking the time to both read and comment. More FAQ’s to come soon.